Entertainment

Here's What People Look at on Facebook Brand Pages

In an effort to catch your eye on their Facebook pages, brands have experimented with apps and splashy profile photos. But in almost all cases, it turns out, the humble Facebook wall itself steals the show.

In an webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, the 30 participants who viewed top Facebook brand pages almost always looked at pages' walls first — usually for at least four times longer than any other element on the page.

On average, the smaller pictures above the wall were noticed 85% of the time, and the "likes" column was noticed just 58% of the time.

Here are some other interesting observations that can be gleaned from the eyetracking maps of Facebook brand pages for Coca-Cola, Skittles, Victoria's Secret, Starbucks, Converse, PlayStation, Pringles and Red Bull:

Content matters. Facebook brand page visitors almost always saw the wall first, and spent more time looking at it than any other element on the page.

The exception: Scantily-clad women. Victoria Secret's page was the only one in which people looked at the profile photo — a busty woman in a brassiere — before they noticed the Facebook wall. When they did move on to the wall, they spent about 25% less time looking at it than they did other brands' walls.

Profile photos can be the difference between seeing and not seeing a brand. Most brand pages' profile photos didn't get a lot of attention. Only 57% of visitors to Coca-Cola's page, for instance, even saw the bottle of Coke that occupies this prime piece of real estate. Generally, profile photos with faces in them got the most attention. An exception to this rule was Skittles, which had an image of a bag of Skittles in the profile photo spot that 90% of visitors saw.

Photos on the wall get attention. The Facebook wall with the most images at the time of the test, PlayStation, was also the one that people spent the most time looking at. On average, viewers stayed on the wall for 4.88 seconds. No other page element on any brand's page held attention for longer than four seconds.

Take a gander at the results of the study in the gallery, and let us know your own observations in the comments.

Facebook Brand Pages

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola: Visual Attention Level

"Visual attention level" refers to the amount of time spent on an element. The that received the most attention are red.

The "opacity map" is the same data displayed differently. The light regions show what people noticed most.

Coca-Cola: Fixation

"Fixation order" refers to the order in which people looked at different spots on the page. "Average time to first fixation" shows how many seconds it took participants to look at certain elements after they arrived on the page.

Coca-Cola: Statistics

Only about half of the people who looked at the page even noticed Coca-Cola's profile image.

Skittles

Skittles: Visual Attention Level

Skittles's profile image attracted an unusual amount of attention for an image without a face at its focal point.

Skittles: Fixation

As with almost all brand pages, participants looked at Skittles's wall first.

Skittles: Statistics

100% of participants looked at Skittles' wall.

Victoria's Secret

Victoria's Secret: Visual Attention Level

Interestingly enough, the model's face, not bra, got the most attention.

Victoria's Secret: Fixation

This was the only page in which participants didn't look at the wall first.

Victoria's Secret: Statistics

Participants spent about twice as long looking at the profile photo than they did on other pages. As a result, the wall receives. The wall, on the other hand, received about 25% less attention than other pages' walls.

Starbucks

Starbucks: Visual Attention Level

Participants seem to have noticed Starbucks's name more than anything else.

Starbucks: Fixation

Starbucks' fixation order goes in a flow, which according to EyeTrackShop GM Ephraim Bander, is a good thing.

"If it goes in a flow, we find a higher retention than if it goes all over the place," he says.

Starbucks: Statistics

80% of participants noticed the photos, many with people in them, above the wall.

Red Bull: Fixation

Red Bull: Statistics

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